Dreams in Cake

As we embarked on this project, it brought me back to working on truck design as an industrial designer. I really enjoyed sculpting such a beautiful “object of desire”. Although one might think that you just take a knife and start sculpting away; it’s simply not true.

To make a car, truck or other vehicle, one must plan out the steps carefully. Scaled drawings are made of the side, front and back views then placed on a rectangular piece of layered cake. The cake must be sturdy so it doesn’t crumble when sculpting. The wheels are made in advance out of gumpaste and set aside to dry for a number of days. The sculpting is done with artists’ clay sculpting tools to get detail and definition.

Now, I’m going to sound all Bruce Lee in “Enter the Dragon”–above all, you must become “one with the object”. It must flow from your being. It becomes like a song that flows from your hands. You need to understand form development and the intent of the sports car designer: does this arc flow into that arc, etc.? For me, a beautiful car is like poetry.

But for the many people viewing a car cake, the magic happens when it looks real. My goal was to make it look like a toy car that could be pushed and played with. One of the main things that allowed this car to look real was that it was floating off the board. Supports behind the wheels elevated the cake so it had a shadow. When it was finished, all I could think of was my son, who had an obsession with Cars Movie, saying “Cooool!”